In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (39 page)

“No, you won’t.”

The undiluted vitriol dripping from Scrope’s tones had Eliza turning.

As she’d expected, Scrope had flung his now useless pistol aside, but contrary to her assumptions, he hadn’t started after them. He still stood on the other ridge, facing them — with another, smaller, but deadlier-looking pistol in his hand.

“I told you,” he snarled, “you won’t get away. You can’t get away. Victor Scrope doesn’t lose his targets.”

His arm rose a fraction higher as he took careful aim.

A bloodcurdling roar erupted out of nowhere, all but drowning Jeremy’s desperate, “Eliza!”

He grabbed her and pulled her back down to the ground — as on the other ridge a massive figure charged from behind the rock wall directly at Scrope.

The roar had made Scrope hesitate. Seeing the figure rushing toward him, he started to turn to bring the pistol to bear on … the laird?

The laird reached Scrope in a furious rush. Grabbing Scrope’s pistol hand, he forced it up, pointing the barrel at the sky.

The pistol discharged harmlessly upward, the report ricocheting between the hills.

Eliza resisted Jeremy’s efforts to shove her behind him. “No — look!” Eyes glued to the swaying figures grappling on the opposite ridge, she gripped Jeremy’s hand. “He — the laird — stopped Scrope from shooting us.”

Shifting to sit up — putting her more or less in his lap — Jeremy stared over her shoulder and felt the utter bemusement that had laced her words infect him.

Beyond stunned, they both watched the titanic struggle. Scrope wasn’t a small man, but the laird was half a head or more taller. And definitely larger, heavier. The advantage clearly lay with the laird, but he was, transparently, trying to subdue Scrope, while Scrope … had transformed into a rabid, raging monster intent only on getting free and coming after his “target.”

Locked together, the men wrestled back and forth, boots scuffling on rock and coarse grass. Scrope struck at the laird whenever he could, but the laird merely blocked and caught Scrope’s arms again.

To Jeremy, it seemed clear the laird was intent on wearing Scrope out, then securing him. Given the size of the laird’s fists, apparent even from Jeremy and Eliza’s position, one good blow might crack Scrope’s skull. The laird fought like a man very aware of his own strength.

After that first bloodcurdling bellow, the laird had fought in grim silence, but Scrope was increasingly vocal. Finally, literally howling in fury, he broke free far enough to knee the laird — who shifted and caught the blow on his thigh.

In doing so, to keep his balance, the laird swung Scrope toward the edge of the ridge, to the edge of the cliff.

Scrope chose that moment to fling himself back, trying to break the laird’s grip.

Scrope succeeded.

On a triumphant bellow, he stepped back.

Off the edge of the cliff into thin air.

The look on his face as he realized was painful to see.

Desperate, he lunged, caught the laird’s sleeve, fell — and took the laird with him.

The big man toppled over the cliff and was gone.

“
My God
!” Pressing her hands to her lips, Eliza stared at the empty space where seconds ago both the laird and Scrope had stood.

A wailing scream — a bellow and scream combined — trailed away, then was abruptly cut off.

She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, or if she truly heard the thump of the bodies hitting the jagged rocks far below.

Together with Jeremy she sat and stared as around them the silence of the mountains returned, then darker clouds washed across the waning sun, casting a deeper pall over the opposite ridge and the ravine.

“Come on.” Jeremy urged her up.

Slowly, she scrambled to her feet. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” Jeremy stood, twisting to look over his left shoulder at the gouge the pistol ball had scored across his upper arm. It had bled profusely, but the flow had slowed to sluggish. “But I think we need to get out of the hills to some place of reasonable safety before we stop and try to work it out.”

Despite his wish, Eliza insisted on binding up his arm with strips torn from her petticoat. “I always wanted to have a reason to do that,” she said, smiling and willing him to let her have her way.

So he did. But as soon as she’d secured her impromptu bandage, he caught her hand, tugged her to him, and kissed her. Ravenous, relieved, and so very thankful.

Overwhelmingly grateful.

And she met him, his roiling feelings mirrored in her kiss, in the barely overcome desperation and the soaring relief that had superseded it.

Drawing back, he rested his forehead on hers. “I thought, for a moment, that I would lose you.”

She clung, one hand tracing his cheek. “I …” Her voice shook, but she strengthened it and went on, “I felt so angry with you for being shot. I know you did it to save me, but …” She shrugged, looked up and met his eyes. “If you hadn’t been hurt, I think I would have hit you.”

He smiled, then a laugh escaped. He put his good arm around her shoulders, lightly hugged. “Well, we’re a pair, it seems, for I wasn’t feeling particularly happy with you at one point in the proceedings, either.” Glancing at the other ridge, he shook his head. “But we’re here, still alive, and they’re dead. We survived.”

He turned toward the boulders and the gap between.

She hung back, met his gaze when he looked inquiringly at her. She tipped her head at the other ridge. “Should we go and look?”

He held her gaze. “You saw the drop. There’s no way any man could survive that fall.”

“But … we’ll never know who he was — the laird — and he did save us at the end.”

“True, but that we needed to be saved was his fault in the first place, so …” Jeremy blew out a breath. “You could say he just put right what he had originally caused to go wrong. Regardless, we can’t dally here. We’ve only a few hours before it’ll get too dark to risk walking on — we need to find safe shelter before then.”

Her gaze went to his bandaged arm, and she nodded. “Yes. You’re right. They’re dead, and there’s nothing we can do to help them. And thanks to them both, we need to help ourselves.”

Leaving his good arm around her shoulders, she slid her arm around his waist and looked ahead. “Come on, then. On home to England.”

They reached the spot beside Windy Gyle where Clennell Street commenced its sharp descent over and down the escarpment. Leaning just a little on Eliza, Jeremy pointed. “The border itself lies just down there, more or less following the base of the escarpment. From here, the hills fall in a series of ridges down to the moorland.”

“Just like the ridges we came up.”

He drew breath, felt the faintly woozy feeling he’d been fighting for the last hundred yards wreathe through his brain again. Before he could stop himself, he confessed in a rush, “I can’t make it down.”

Eliza looked at him, concern filling her eyes. “Your wound —”

“It’s not so much the wound itself as the blood loss, I imagine. I can walk on reasonably well for a while, but going down that track …” He eyed the descent made for horsemen and cattle, not pedestrians, then shook his head. “Me attempting it would be a recipe for disaster.”

She’d been studying his face. She blinked, nodded. Crisply said, “At least you’re man enough to say so. Most wouldn’t, and then we’d start down, and you’d end up collapsing on me, and then where would we be?”

Lips thinning, he muttered, “Precisely why I mentioned it.”

“So”— she looked around —“I suppose we should look for somewhere to spend the night.”

He almost grinned. Where had the tonnish young lady who didn’t like being out in the countryside gone? She was still there, he suspected, just making the best of things. “We don’t have to do that.” When she arched a brow at him, he explained, “I told you I rode up here a few weeks ago with Royce.”

She nodded, then let him turn her around and start walking up Clennell Street, back into Scotland. “I remember.”

“We went to visit his half brother, Hamish O’Loughlin, and his wife, Molly. Their farmhouse isn’t far from here.” He glanced at the dark clouds rolling ever closer. “Less than an hour should see us there, and I know Hamish will help.”

“If he’s Royce’s half brother, then I’m sure he will.”

They found the correct track off Clennell Street and circled Windy Gyle. With no one chasing them, they didn’t need to hurry, to look over their shoulders in fear. Contrarily, the lack of pursuit made the going slower; they had time to feel their tiredness, their aches and pains.

Time for Jeremy’s wound to start throbbing.

Gritting his teeth against the burning pain, he slogged on, the need to see her to safety strong enough to keep him going.

They circumnavigated the headwaters of a stream, then followed the track down its bank into a shallow upland valley.

Low stone walls appeared, dividing the pastureland into fields. They finally reached the spot where the farmhouse came into view, tucked into a pocket in the hills, snugly protected from the winds and the weather.

Slowing, Jeremy halted and sank back against a low stone wall. “That’s it.” His tones were clipped, his lips tight with pain.

Head tilting, Eliza looked at him. “I can see it.”

Without meeting her gaze, he nodded at the house. “You go on. You can send Hamish back with a horse for me — it’ll be easier for me that way.”

It sounded so reasonable … until she looked back, lifted her eyes, and saw the curtain of misty rain sweeping their way, gradually but steadily blotting out the hills as it came.

“That’s all very well, but I’m not leaving you here to get drenched. And don’t tell me it’s better for me that I don’t get wet — I haven’t been shot. Allowing someone who has a pistol wound to get drenched and catch a chill on top of it sounds like something my mother would warn me never to do. So!” She looked at him, met his narrowing eyes with blatant obstinacy. “Don’t argue. Just get up, lean more on me, and we’ll be able to go faster, and then neither of us will get wet at all.”

Exhaling through his teeth, Jeremy pushed carefully away from the wall. “If you go on alone, you’ll reach the farm before the rain.”

“Possibly. And if you’ll just shut up and do as I say”— seizing his good arm, she pulled it over her shoulders, keeping hold of his hand —“we might both reach the house before getting drenched. Now come on.”

Stifling a sigh, he let her help him along.

A few steps along, she made a rude sound. “I won’t collapse if you actually
lean
a little weight on me, you know. Remember, the aim of this exercise is that we both don’t get wet, so you might say I have a vested interest in you leaning on me properly.”

Lips firming, he did … and discovered that together they could go considerably faster. He was tall, but for a woman so was she; tucked under his arm, her arm around his waist, she provided just the right support for his flagging abilities.

They reached the entry to the farm yard just as the first wash of light raindrops pattered over them.

Dogs started barking.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured, “they’re tied up in the stable.”

As he’d hoped, the barking brought Hamish to his door.

The big Scot filled the opening, as tall as Royce but significantly wider. The instant he saw who was limping across his yard, Hamish yelled back to Molly, then came striding out to meet them.

“Jeremy, lad — what the deuce are you doing here?”

“He’s hurt,” Eliza answered. “He’s been shot in the arm and it bled dreadfully, and I think he’s fainting.”

“Nah.” Hamish ducked to look into Jeremy’s eyes, then grinned. “He’s just a trifle weak is all. Here, lass, let me take over.”

Eliza reluctantly gave way to Hamish’s brute strength; if Jeremy did collapse, better Hamish was there to catch him.

She followed on Jeremy’s other side, eyes on his face — and nearly ran into the doorframe.

A gentle hand stopped her. “Here, now.”

Turning, Eliza met a pair of bright blue eyes. “You must be Molly.”

The small woman with her corona of bright hair smiled. “Aye, that I am. Why don’t you come on inside out of the mizzle, and Hamish will bring Jeremy, then we can all sit and have a cup of tea while you tell us what’s happened.”

Warmth and comfort radiated from the house, from Molly and Hamish. Feeling a weight she hadn’t known had settled on her shoulders fall away, Eliza nodded. “Thank you.” She smiled weakly. “That sounds heavenly.”

hey spent the night cocooned in the warmth of Hamish and Molly’s home, enfolded in and succored by the pervading sense of calm, unruffleable family life.

After sitting Jeremy down at her kitchen table, Molly, aided by Eliza, unwrapped the makeshift bandage, pried him from his ruined shirt and coat, then washed, salved, and rebandaged his arm. Hamish helped by providing a glass of whisky, ignoring Molly’s admonishing frown.

Jeremy was grateful; the whisky dulled the pain.

He was also grateful for the shirt and jacket Hamish lent him; both were overlarge, but warm and comfortable.

Shortly after, Hamish and Molly’s younger children, Dickon and Georgia, twenty-three and twenty years old, respectively, joined them about the table for dinner; after the meal, Hamish and Molly left the cleaning up to the younger ones, ushered Jeremy and Eliza into the parlor, settled them in armchairs, then demanded to be told all.

Between them, Jeremy and Eliza managed a creditably succinct account of all that had happened from the instant Eliza had walked into the back parlor of St. Ives House. They had to backtrack and explain about Heather’s kidnapping, of which Molly and Hamish had not yet heard.

Jeremy felt no qualms over disclosing such matters to Hamish and Molly; he knew how close the couple were to Royce and Minerva.

When they reached the end of their tale and described the unexpected fight they’d witnessed on the edge of the cliff, Hamish exchanged a glance with Molly. “I’ll go with Dickon tomorrow at first light and take a look at the bodies.”

Molly nodded. “Do.”

Then she gathered Eliza and Jeremy and shooed them upstairs to the beds she and Georgia had prepared, instructing them to sleep until they felt like getting up. “I’m sure Hamish will be wanting to go with you to the castle. Once he’s seen the body, he might know more of your laird.”

Jeremy nodded, exchanged a glance with Eliza, then watched as she thanked Molly for all her help and disappeared into one room, leaving him to do the same and retreat to a room of his own. Alone.

He told himself she was only across the corridor, perfectly safe.

The next morning, he came down to breakfast late. Eliza was at the table, eating a bowl of porridge. Summoning a smile, he aimed it at Molly, standing by the stove. “Sorry — I took your suggestion to heart. Is there any breakfast left?”

There was no one else in the kitchen.

“Of course there is — and I made the suggestion because I meant it.” Molly turned back to the stove. “Eliza’s just got down herself. Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.” He met Eliza’s gaze, noted her eyes were shadowed. Saw the cynical quirk of her brow, as if she knew he was lying.

The truth was he’d found it difficult to slip under sleep’s veil. The nagging pain in his shoulder, combined with an underlying disquiet that had had more to do with missing Eliza’s warmth beside him — how on earth that had come to be so familiar and in some odd sense required when they’d only shared a bed for five nights he didn’t know — had kept him awake long after the house had fallen silent.

He’d slipped into a fitful doze as the sky had been lightening, then he’d slept through the sounds of the busy household waking.

Getting dressed had been a painful chore, but he’d managed it with the same stoicism with which he’d got undressed the night before. The wound was painful and sore, but he had reasonable use of his arm.

Moving it hurt like hell, but …

Taking the seat beside Eliza, he thanked Molly as she placed a steaming bowl of porridge liberally laced with honey before him. The aroma reached him. His mouth watered; he picked up his spoon and dug in.

Eliza watched him, satisfied his appetite, at least, was unaffected. Unlike Molly, she knew what he normally looked like in the morning, and the lines bracketing his mouth, etched into his lean cheeks, weren’t usually there.

Finishing her own porridge, she exchanged the empty bowl for the cup of tea Molly had ready for her. She seriously doubted Jeremy had slept all that well. She certainly hadn’t, too worried over him to find any peace, not until dawn had been streaking the sky.

She’d debated going to check on him, but concern over waking him if he had managed to fall asleep had kept her in her own little bed. Tossing and turning, then later dreaming that he’d started a fever, but his color this morning was normal, not flushed, so it seemed that it had indeed only been a dream. The beginning of a nightmare.

She sipped her tea and nearly sighed. She smiled at Molly. “Lovely.”

Sounds at the front of the house grew louder, then resolved into Hamish and Dickon returning. Both came into the kitchen. While Hamish went to drop a kiss on Molly’s curly head, Dickon nodded to Jeremy and Eliza, then looked at Hamish. “I’ll go rub the horses down.”

Hamish nodded and took a seat opposite Jeremy. “Aye — I can tell this lot all that’s needful, but no doubt you’d best be ready to ride down with the three of us — your Uncle Ro’ll want to question you as well as me, to make sure you didn’t spot something I missed.”

Dickon grinned, ducked his head, and went.

Hamish smiled fondly at Dickon’s back. “Idolizes his uncle Ro, he does.”

Jeremy arched his brows. “He could do a lot worse.”

“Verra true.” Hamish folded his hands and leveled his gaze on them. “The bodies, sadly, were gone by the time we reached the spot.”

“Gone?” Jeremy pushed his empty bowl away. “How?”

“I’m thinking it’ll be one of the droving crews coming past — there were signs riders had been at the spot, milling about for a time before riding on north. It’s the way around here — we find a body, we take it to the magistrate in the nearest town. He’ll report the death and arrange for burial.” Hamish grimaced. “Trouble is, the nearest town depends on the route the riders were taking. That said, however, there’s no doubt whatever that your men fell to their deaths on the rocks.” He grimaced again, this time plainly in distaste. “Plenty of evidence to attest to that.”

Jeremy digested that, then asked, “How do we go about finding where the bodies were taken?”

Hamish met his gaze. “I’m thinking that you’ll have enough on your plate just now, what with Eliza here having gone missing more’n a week ago, and everyone who knows you both waiting and expecting you to reach Wolverstone days since. Best you leave locating the bodies — and learning what we can from the laird’s — to me and Royce. Once I track the bodies down, he’ll be able to pull his usual strings and learn all we need.”

After a moment, Jeremy inclined his head. “Thank you — that would almost certainly be the best way forward. However”— he glanced at Eliza —“it might be wise not to inquire too openly. We don’t want anyone asking why we’re so interested in learning the laird’s identity, and as for Scrope, I’d be surprised if he isn’t known in certain circles as the villain he was. Again, we don’t want to allow any connection to be drawn between Eliza and Scrope.”

“No.” Hamish was nodding. “Or between you and Scrope, come to that. Leave it to Royce and me — we’ll get the information without anyone the wiser.” Hamish grinned. “If necessary, we’ll lie. Royce always was good at weaving stories.”

Jeremy grinned back. “I imagine that would have been a required talent in his previous life.” Over the years of the wars with France, Royce had been England’s spymaster in charge of all covert English agents on the Continent.

“So.” Hamish looked from Jeremy to Eliza. “Are you ready to start out again? It’ll take us an hour, a bit more, to reach the castle.”

Eliza looked at the clock on the dresser. “It’s just eleven o’clock — if we leave now, we should reach there before they sit down to luncheon.”

“Aye — so I’m thinking,” Hamish said.

Jeremy caught Eliza’s gaze. “The track’s too steep for a gig — we’ll have to go on horseback.”

“Oh.” Her face fell.

Hamish frowned. “We’ve plenty of horses.”

Eliza grimaced. “It’s not that. I’m … not a very confident horsewoman.”

Both Hamish and Molly blinked; an instant of silence ensued.

Molly broke it. “Well, then.” She spoke to her husband. “Give Jeremy Old Martin, and he can take Eliza up before him.”

“Good idea.” Nodding, Hamish rose. He looked at Jeremy and Eliza. “If you’ve finished here, we might as well get going.”

Jeremy and Eliza thanked Molly, sincerely grateful for her cosseting. Molly beamed, pressed their hands, and wished them well, then they followed Hamish out to the stable.

Dickon was there; between them, the three men saddled three horses.

Jeremy insisted on saddling Old Martin, a placid older gelding. “Moving my arm helps.”

It also hurt, but he had a suspicion that if he didn’t use the arm normally, it wouldn’t heal as well as it might.

While he buckled the saddle girth, he finally put his finger on what it was that seemed so different between now and when he’d visited Hamish and Molly with Royce two weeks ago.
He
was the only thing to have changed.

And he had changed — dramatically.

He felt older, more mature. More tried and tested. He’d been through the fire and had survived and emerged on the other side; he now knew his own mettle.

He also had a much clearer vision of how he wanted his life henceforth to be.

Girth tightened, he flipped the stirrup down, then turned to Eliza.

Looked at her, met her hazel eyes … and felt his heart expand and his awareness lock on her. She was the essential central foundation he needed for his future, the future he now wanted — his future with her.

She smiled a trifle tentatively, unsure of his thoughts.

He returned the smile fleetingly; now was not the time for the discussion they would have to have, the discussion they wouldn’t be able to avoid once they reached Wolverstone and returned to their normal lives. He held the horse steady. “Would you rather ride before, or behind?”

She glanced up at the horse’s back; Old Martin was a good seventeen hands tall. “Before, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t. Here — take my hand.” He helped her up, then swung up behind her.

Hamish and Dickon were already mounted and waiting in the yard.

After making sure Eliza was comfortably and safely settled before him, Jeremy walked Old Martin out, appreciating the gelding’s steady, unhurried gait and broad back — appreciating why Molly had suggested him as a mount. There was no chance Old Martin would bolt even if Jeremy dropped the reins.

“Right then.” Hamish nodded. “Let’s away.”

Hamish led the way out, Jeremy followed, and Dickon brought up the rear. In line, they trotted up the track, back to Clennell Street, then turned south, to England and Wolverstone Castle.

When their party passed through the wrought-iron gates that marked the entrance to Wolverstone Castle and came within sight of the castle’s front steps, Eliza could barely believe her eyes. “Where the devil did they all come from?”

From behind her, apparently equally transfixed by the crowd waiting to greet them, Jeremy murmured, “And why?”

“My parents,” she whispered, “I’d expected, and Royce and Minerva, of course, and Hugo and Cobby and even Meggin — we knew they might be here. But my sisters, and Breckenridge, and Gabriel and Alathea, and Devil and Honoria and Aunt Helena?”

“Leonora and Trentham I thought might come, but Christian and Letitia, and Delborough and Deliah, and, to cap it all, Lady Osbaldestone?”

Before Eliza could do more than make a disbelieving sound, they drew close enough to have to plaster on reassuring smiles.

They halted in the forecourt. As Jeremy dismounted, with beaming smiles and cries of welcome their watchers broke ranks and flooded down the steps. By the time he lifted Eliza down, a small tide of females had reached them, and then they were swamped.

Caught up in her mother’s scented and transparently hugely relieved embrace, Eliza barely had time to assure Celia that she was all right before her father pulled her into a crushing hug, then passed her to Heather, then Angelica, and Gabriel, and Alathea …

The sound of a dozen voices rolled over them, all exclaiming and asking questions, which Hamish — bless him — fielded as best he could. After days of relative isolation, with just Jeremy for company, Eliza felt like she was drowning.

Not just in the noise and the physical crowd, but in the emotions swirling around her; happy though they were in general, an undercurrent of worry, of concern, remained.

On her parents’ part, she knew that worry would persist until she and Jeremy had told their tale and then sorted out their … consequences.

She wasn’t ready to think of those yet.

Catching his gaze, seeing in his brown eyes the same sense of being overwhelmed, she smiled, a small private smile that he returned before they were both drawn once more to attend to those who stood all around them.

Eliza finally reached Meggin and embraced her warmly. “You were right — we didn’t come close to making it in a day. The food came in useful.”

Meggin laughed and drew back to hold Eliza at arm’s length. “I’m just so glad — we’re all so glad — you made it through. We were so worried when you didn’t make it by the second, or even the third, day.”